Determining File Creation Date in PHP

Retrieving the creation date of a file can be challenging, as PHP does not provide a direct function for this purpose. However, you can utilize existing functions to obtain an approximation.

Using filemtime and filectime

The filemtime function returns the last modification time of a file. However, if the file has never been modified, filemtime will return the current time, which is not desirable.

For this reason, it is recommended to use the filectime function instead. On Windows systems, filectime returns the creation time of the file.

Unix Systems:

On Unix-based systems, filectime returns the change time of the file. This is the closest you can get to the creation time since Unix filesystems typically do not store creation timestamps.

Note:

It is important to note that the ctime parameter in Unix context refers to the change time, not the creation time, as the latter is unavailable in most Unix filesystems.